Preparation of a legal document, such as, e.g., a written contract, may involve a number of revisions resulting from negotiation between the parties to the contract. During this process, several electronic versions of the document may be created, culminating in the final document that can be printed out and signed by one or more interested parties. A legal document may be negotiated by the parties' representatives rather than by the parties themselves. The final electronic version of the document that is intended for signature by the person responsible for the consequences of the legal document is typically printed out and then signed.
While the final electronic version of a legal document may be readily identifiable as such (e.g., based on the date of the document, the name with its assigned version number, etc.) the printed out hard copy of the final version may not be readily distinguished from earlier non-final versions of the document. Consequently, the signer may wind up signing a document that is not the correct or final version. Furthermore, in the process of perfecting a document through revisions, the name of the undersigned on the document may change, such that an earlier version of the document may indicate an undersigned that no longer have sufficient rights to sign the document, while the originally-designated signer might not be aware of this fact. Still further, the interest of a party with respect to a legal document may expire, e.g., as in the case where the legal document is an offer letter or a service offering. This expiration information might not be part of the document text itself but might be information that the designated signer is not aware of.
In some existing systems, a unique two-dimensional barcode may be printed on a document page in addition to the content of the document. The two-dimensional barcode can be scanned with a barcode reader. The barcode reader may then communicate with an enterprise system and validate the document. A smart phone with a camera may also be used as barcode reader, provided the smart phone is executing an appropriate mobile application capable of comparing the scanned barcode against reference barcodes stored in a validation database.